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£14.8bn, 73 miles and that's just the start of Crossrail

Tunnelling work for the cross-London Crossrail project has finally been completed, here are some facts about the big build.

Credit: PA

At £14.8 billion, the 73-mile Crossrail scheme is costing more than £202 million per mile

In contrast, the 335 mile long, £50 billion HS2 high-speed scheme would cost, if both its phases are completed, just over £127 million per mile. This includes the £7.5 billion cost of the trains

Completed for £5.8 billion in 2007, the 68 mile long HS1 high-speed Channel Tunnel rail link cost just over £85 million per mile

The 31.4-mile Channel Tunnel was completed at a cost of around £9.5 billion in 1994 and cost more than £302 million per mile

Start of Crossrail construction began at Canary Wharf in London Docklands on May 15 2009, while tunnelling work started in May 2012

Fully open from 2019, Crossrail will run from Reading in Berkshire in the west to Shenfield in Essex in the east, with spurs to Heathrow Airport and Abbey Wood in south London

Excavated material from Crossrail's tunnels and stations is being used to create an RSPB nature reserve at Wallasea Island in Essex

More than 1,500 ship journeys have delivered three million tonnes of material to the reserve

The tunnelling work has unearthed artefacts revealing London's history, including fascinating finds from archaeological work beneath Liverpool Street station

In March this year a team of 60 archaeologists began excavating around 3,000 skeletons from the Bedlam burial ground at Liverpool Street

Eight tunnel boring machines have been used to dig the tunnels under central London. The last two were Elizabeth and Victoria which each weighed 1,000 tonnes, were more than 450ft long and more than 20ft in diameter

New Crossrail stations are being built through central London and Docklands at Paddington, Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon, Liverpool Street, Whitechapel, Canary Wharf, Custom House and Woolwich

There will also be a new station at Abbey Wood, with the new stations able to accommodate trains up to 200 metres long which will boost London's rail capacity by 10%

There will be up to 24 trains per hour between Paddington and Whitechapel during peak time